Beware of Guest Books

I just encountered my first obstacle in purchasing a new home. Like anybody else who wants to buy a new house, my fiance, D, and I have been going to open houses to see what's on the market. A couple of months ago, we visited a new development and we fell in love with the first house we saw. The realtor, B, was friendly enough and showed us a couple of the houses in the new development. Before we left, he asked us to sign in the guestbook. When we hesitated, he said that it was a security measure for him to keep track of who came by to check out the houses. That made sense, so D and I signed in. We liked B, so about a week later we called him up to see if he could show us around to other houses in our price range. We set an appointment and he showed us about five houses in one afternoon. None of them appealed to us, but since we weren't ready to buy the first house we saw yet, we left the house shopping for a little later.

For the next few weekends, D and I checked out other open houses and in one, we met another realtor, L. She was also very friendly and she gave us her card and that was that.

At around the beginning of January, D and I wanted more information on the whole house buying process and since B was the only realtor we had met more than once, we called him to see if he could give us more info. We met at his office and talked for about an hour and within that hour B kept asking us to sign a one-page contract. We didn't sign anything because one of the things we were concerned about was the dual-agency that was presented to us. B's real estate brokerage was responsible for selling the houses that D and I liked, but if B were to represent us and his boss represented the seller, then we would have a dual-agency. Although B said that he wouldn't get any money if we were to go to another real estate agent, D and I weren't too comfortable with the idea of a dual-agency. In fact, we were told by a retired real estate agent before we met up with B the third time that we should hire a different real estate agent to represent us. We told B that we would have to think about it before signing any contract with him.

In the end, D and I decided to call L to see if she could represent us, being an agent from a different real estate company, and after meeting her we felt that she was the best person for us. We clicked as a team, she gave us a lot of information, she went the extra mile to help us as best as she could, and she was very clear in what the process was about; she was just an all-around fantastic real estate agent.

Well, it was time for us to talk to B and see if we could negotiate a closing deal about the house. Here came the kicker. Apparently, that "guestbook" D and I signed at the first open house was somehow a binding document that said if we had to buy a house from that new development, we would have to deal only with B and/or his real estate firm. I felt that we were deceived. We were told that the guestbook was for security reasons only, but had we known that it would prevent us from finding our own representation, we would have refused. Currently, we can do nothing until L finds more information for us.

First of all, I want to warn all potential home-buyers out there to beware of "guestbooks." The one we signed looked just like any other guestbook we've would've signed, say at weddings, and it contained names of other people. I should've signed us in as Mike Rotch or Seymour Butts. Secondly, is there anyone reading this who knows about real estate law? I'd like to know what our options are. I felt that buyers should have a right to just ask for information without being roped into any deal; D is a very logical and reasonable person and I know he's done a lot of research before we went house-buying, but we are still at the mercy of real estate "experts."